


in error/inheritance

by sharklion



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Implied/Referenced Mind Control, M/M, implied bad end, ygoshipolympics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-27
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-17 11:27:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4664853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharklion/pseuds/sharklion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Akaba Leo."  Reiji says, but his voice is so transparent with unfulfillment he might as well have said, <i>everyone</i>.   Because really, to declare war on Akaba Leo was to go against the whole of the world.</p><p>Abruptly, Shun sympathizes.  He doesn't see any value in it, either.</p><p>---</p><p>Sequel to Ante(de)grade(ation), in which Shun is far from the only person who has lost things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Reiji is only as pious to his father's aims as they align to his own.

Instead, Reiji's loyalty is to the glutted void in the pit of his chest he's named ambition. His unfulfillment is a drowning oil slick, and he means to burn himself clean of it. If it would empty it of desire, he would undo the whole world to make himself whole. He doesn't remember it ever not being there.

But, of course, Reiji doesn't remember his childhood. It happens, when you grow older. When you grow up. He doesn't remember tutors coming to teach him his maths formulas or etiquette instructors, or his mother and father coming to check on him in a dark room.

Watching Shun strapped to the hospital bed, pinioned with needles and struggling against a visor bolted shut, he puts his hand on Layra's shoulder. Layra watches quietly, without saying anything, shuddering and curling on himself. He doesn't watch with an adult's unflinching posture. But it's alright. Layra is still a child.

Someday, he'll grow up too.

\---

The Professor's other soldiers give them a wide berth when Shun and Serena storm through the halls like a forecast heralding disaster. Serena is not sorry. She has no patience for those that take the Academia's goals lightly, with any less focus than she has. It's for that reason that she volunteers for assignments with Shun, she says in her reports.

And it's because he can't stand her that her requests are approved, she doesn't need them to tell her.

She has tucked into her belt the crisply folded mission objectives as they head for port. Shun had his eyes too focused on her mouth uncurling from a smirk to a grudging line to notice the way her hands crinkled the paper, before she had halted her fingers from making fists. 

She is being wasted _again_ on already conquered lands. They're done testing her: this time, it must be for Shun. 

\---

He tracks down the operational base without difficulty. From the field, he knows the layout of Heartland pre-invasion as well as he does the LDS tower, the positioning of Reiji's cameras throughout Maiami, as he does the most to least traveled hallways to take in the Academia to avoid Serena— it's not remotely a challenge. And neither, really, are their duelists.

Shun is a man without a past, but he doesn't need one. His results are all he needs. His records are an upward sloping line into infinity, his scores and card collection counts show that he only improves. The filth that clung to his old shredded wardrobe, the choking despair he sheds like something emerging bladed from a chrysalis. His scores are comparative to Serena's now, and he's sure that's why she keeps him by her side— you keep your enemies closest of all. 

But he _will_ surpass her. 

The mob that attempts to take Shun from behind with a tire-iron is woefully unprepared— for his physical prowess, flipping out of reach up to the first rung of an old fire escape and kicking the weapon out of his assailants hand _and_ for his deck. Their decks have been honed in a pattern to counteract a singular rhythm, but Shun's deck has the _wrong_ one. He sees an anxious suspicion growing on their faces before he summons out one of his aces and it morphs to betrayed horror. He's been mistaken for one of _them_ again, with his deck that uses their summoning method.

He barks out, before they can accuse, preemptive, "The Academia has held this land for years and you're _surprised_ we've learned your tricks?!" 

The horror trades out for fury and one shouts back, "So stealing our home and comrades wasn't enough for you, now you've taken our summons!?"

"If you have thought to waste on accusations, you're not focusing on the duel." Shun's deck has always been his own, and he spends no thought on responding. "Defend yourself and prove your will, or have your lives stolen away too!"

They make the attempt but he knows XYZ's Resistance's strategies as well as he knows his own, and has a countertrap prepared. Their fury mounts on their faces as their attempt to counter him only brings him more strength and he ranks up his ace. "That card— you _can't_ have—!"

He clearly does. There's no point in protesting the truth, whatever ideal world they wanted to believe in where their ideals would be enough to stop him from using strategies that mirror their own, as if their method of dueling had some _guaranteed_ purity. Nothing in this world is guaranteed. Not even his own victory. He'd had hope, for not long, that they'd provide some challenge. That Heartland had still _some_ strength to offer.

But the kill is easy and Shun watches with a sloshing in his gut as their life points drop to zero. He'd wanted more than this. He could believe that it's not that his opponents are weak, but rather it's his own strength, but Shun doesn't have that sort of arrogance. He knows more than anyone that his strength is a shell built around a hollow core. That their causes couldn't overcome his own meant they had gotten nothing other than what they deserved, for not being able to stop him. They should know what happens to losers.

He takes the cards in his hands before the wind can take them, and his eyes cross to where Serena is battling. She looks cross as she does when she's not infuriatingly superior— what it is that she's taking such pride in, he'll never know. His eyes are sharp enough to catch even at a distance the cache of cards she's gathered. Smaller than his own. 

It's the first time mid-mission he's surpassed her by so much, so early on. An edge he'll have to press and widen, because complacency is a weakness she'll crush beneath her rank-and-file boots but he's invigorated by his lead. The disappointment he had at the weakness of his XYZ opponents is smothered in the thrill of rivaling her, that _this_ is the duel he really wants to crash his skills up against though they're bound by a cause to the same side. But still, he's beating her in this.

Exhilarated, he can't help but bark out a laugh, short and harsh. The air still smells acrid from the destruction his Raid Raptor had wrought, and the mechanical scent of devastation burns at his nostrils. He reflexively pockets the cards, and goes to fight another, laughter still in his ears. Laughter amongst flames, like his earliest memories, it feels like coming home. He takes another and grins, vicious, at Serena.

Her eyes lock with his and the look of disgust on her face strikes him with nausea, dizziness. He shudders violently and lists suddenly to the side, his balance off. His shoulder impacts with the wall and his other hand grasps frantically for a support before he doubles over and heaves. 

Sick, he feels so sick. He empties his stomach out and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. His vision is blackened, thick with smoke and it's the feeling of not having eaten in days, running on empty. Like limbs stretched spread-eagle in solitary, waiting to get the drop on a guard. Like he's had _another_ nonsensical attack when he was _finally_ being trusted again with missions instead of being paraded around like LDS's show dog, their best, brightest, and completely useless in practical terms.

When his vision clears and he looks up, Serena's once again surpassed him. The time limit until rendezvous is running short. 

She doesn't say a word about his illness when she comes over to retrieve him, and instead holds out two cards. "Here." He doesn't take them. She made him sick and now expects him to take her charity? She thrusts them at him again, " _Here_. The Academia assigning us _here_ is a farce. I want other assignments." She glares, challenging him to call her ambition a liar's, or to let pettiness towards her keep him from his goals.

This time, he takes them. They return with a perfectly even score, and they stand at attention before the Professor. It's neither of their record performances.

But the Professor nods approval at their even scores, the confirmed quashing of a small resistance cell, and smiles.

Relief is a feeling closer to dissatisfaction than he'd thought. They'd lied and it had still been good enough. Shun keeps his eyes focused on the Professor's right ear, and his mind started wandering as the Professor analyzed their report. Shun kept his gaze steady, and tried to remember if Reiji's ear lobes were attached or unattached. He usually only examines Reiji's with his teeth and not his eyes, but somehow, even only in dim memory the two don't look much alike. 

He comes out of his distraction when Serena snorts, just in time to hear the relevant part. As a reward for their performance today, they're no longer on probation. Serena nods as if it's her due, and Shun doesn't respond, waiting at attention to be dismissed. There's a likelihood that it was laughter that triggered his attack. He won't risk a smile. 

Serena leaves before they're given permission to, and he has to speed after, when he's released. She didn't look back for him, but he kept his eyes on her as she left the room

When they are out of sight and observation radius Shun catches her wrist. She snatches it back like she'd had her hand shoved down the garbage disposal and his fingers are on the switch, but not before he can tell her, "I owe you."

"It's not the first time." She says in response, and his brows draw together in a lack of comprehension, but she doesn't explain a bit more. Of course. Typical.

\---

Serena's missions and Shun's missions are ostensibly the same, but sent out with her he always feels she has different goals so he can feel his changing in accordance— to watching her, to defeating her, to pursuing the mission on his own without a dependable partner during the occasions she vanishes altogether. (Twice.) But still, their statistics show only improvement in synchro. He hasn't had any attacks. 

This is a good thought, until one day he wakes up with her above him, her hands digging through his belongings. She finds his deck and he jolts out of his recline forward, to grab her hand. "What do you think you're doing?" 

"I was just _looking_." She looks at him and doesn't pretend innocence, holding the evidence so obviously but rather just states. She might have been on the way to do more, but he has no proof. He never does. He doesn't let go of her wrist but doesn't jerk her hand away or snatch his deck back from her either as she shuffles through it. She isn't an enemy. There is no harm in working with your allies. It's not standard curriculum— he'd never specialized in tag duels— but he knows it from common sense and doesn't stop her even if he is thinking about prying his deck from her hands. "You haven't changed these cards."

Since when? But he hasn't, it's true. "No. It works."

He feels like she's mocking him, as she puts it down like she's lost interest abruptly. "That's _it_? As long as it works, that's good enough?"

Abruptly he feels like he's disappointed her, and doesn't understand why he cares, and is angry all at once— he always is, but now, he has a reason to aim it at her, to blame someone for it. Serena never makes any sense. Harsh and challenging in his defensiveness, he confirms her accusation. "Yes. What are you expecting?"

"More, out of you." She's never seemed to like him so why exactly she has these bizarre expectations—that he doesn't see any basis for and she never has any desire to outline or explain— is completely beyond him. She takes her hand and entwines her fingers with his, in a gesture that doesn't suit her and smiles. Her fingers are cold from the night air and he hates the sight of happiness on her face. He tries to pull back from her grasp but she holds tight and takes her other hand to curl his fingers over hers. "A lot more."

He can't bring himself to shove her aside, he needs to see what point she is trying to prove. There is nothing he hates more than gaps in his understanding, when he's fought so hard to cement himself. He is the best the LDS and the Academia have to offer, he isn't someone who falls to panic attacks and stares blankly at dinner plates when he doesn't recognize names Layra mentions. He tastes acid at the back of his throat. " _Why?_ LDS is a _joke_. My performance there is enough for you to think so _well_ of me?" He spits out the word _well_ — he doesn't believe it of her, when he's seen so much evidence to the contrary.

"Of course not." She rolls her eyes, "I know better."

The alarm goes off— Synchro commons rebels are attempting to raid their outpost. The Tops and Fusion are hypothetically allied, but some days it is difficult to tell if it brings them more aid or trouble. Shun jumps to attention, and pulls her up by their linked hands without letting go. She smiles at him, and lets their link drop, then scowls. There's no place for smiles or laughter on a battlefield. Her face reminds him of that, every time since the last time he made that error. The strange shifting sand feeling vanishes from his gut and he's left solid with the knowledge of their objectives. He throws on his Academia coat, and follows her out to the sounds of war cries and wreckage.

It's hardly a week later, when Reiji has Shun return to his side.


	2. Chapter 2

"What the hell is this!?" Shun's voice echoes off the walls of Reiji's private office, his voice the only one that would dare raise against Akaba's. The only voice that would that's _not_ Serena's and she isn't here to cut through the air. He regrets it the moment he thinks of it— Serena's mirage presence in his head. She'd barely been there and it was enough to gouge him to his core, the way her remarks had always been cutting, and she'd always known how to get beneath his skin. He's relieved, to be here away from her. 

But how dare he prefer this? He'd fought hard to prove his worth on the battlefield, as more than a dress-up doll and show dog. How dare that girl be enough to drive him from everything he wanted, to make him _glad_ he's returning to Akaba's embrace. 

He knows where he stands here, here where he accomplishes nothing in Akaba's tower, at Akaba's side. He'd been deluding himself to think he was beyond this crutch. He slams his fist down of the desk, and Reiji closes his hand over Shun's, like comfort during a confrontation. It's all wrong, and he's more aware than ever that it's not just him there's something wrong with: it took two to have what they had between them. Akaba never responds correctly to his anger. When Shun threw it at him in fists or from his mouth Akaba never throws it back at him.

"There's been two attempts on my life," Akaba tells him calmly, no more concerned than when the investment market is rocky.

"There's been—" Of course there's been. The Academia and LDS have more than enough enemies. He switches tracks. "You have plenty of other soldiers!" He would almost be flattered but he'd never taken Reiji for the clingy type.

"None I can guarantee weren't involved. I need someone I can trust, in this situation." His fingers trace over Shun's knuckles while the rest of his body is still, a gesture Shun has no idea how to read except as intimate.

"You trust me." Shun states flatly. He doesn't question it, but he doesn't _trust_ it— Akaba can't _possibly_ be stupid enough to think he's trustworthy. Not when he has notebooks full of rants he doesn't recall even while he recognizes his own handwriting on the page.

"Of course." He smiles a private darkly humorous smile. "I made you myself."

Furious at the dismissal of his point, Shun takes an enameled pen holder off the desk and throws it at him. His reflexes are superior to Akaba's and the moment he registers the projectile is the moment it hits and a thin line of blood trickles from the cut on his forehead, down into his eye behind red newly-cracked frames.

"Do you feel better, Kurosaki?" He removes the glasses and rubs them against his scarf, then presses a call button— requesting Nakajima to bring him a new pair, no doubt.

" _You trust me_." He spits, gesturing at the broken shards of ceramic scattered everywhere.

"As much as I trust myself." He says it seriously. Of course, Akaba is the one fool enough to be fooling around with him. It's not saying a lot, he realizes.

"Fine. It's your neck on the line." He looks at the cut he left and sighs irritatedly. "There's medical supplies in my room. Come on, I'll disinfect it." It's true as much as it's an excuse to have him in private, and leave before Nakajima can arrive.

\---

Reiji doesn't give him any details, so he gets to searching on his own.

LDS is an edifice of records— duelists records, tapes upon endless tapes of security footage, academic scores: a marina trench of dizzying reams of information that anything could sink to the bottom of and never be seen again. 

There's records of Reiji, too, of course. Shun goes through them, looking for hints. Strictly speaking, he's just security, but he knows the record rooms as well as the inside of the walls of his own skin. He's lived in here, scraping together all the second-hand parts of a person he could find before. 

That's why he notices it— of the child Reiji, the boy who once traveled dimensions to reconcile with his estranged father. Shun recognizes none of him in Reiji. He resolves nothing from it, other than the decided impression that the child in the warm sweater would have made a terrible heir to this financial and military empire.

Disjointedly, he comes to the conclusion, that must be _why_. You grow up, you change. The past only exists in service to the present— old weaknesses would have to be stamped out. He thinks of the bear Layra no longer carries, and how Layra always seems too frightened to be resentful.

He's never seen Reiji hesitant, let alone scared.

\---

Was there even an assassination attempt? Manipulation is Reiji's primary tactic of operating. He wouldn't put it beyond him for this to be what he says, instead of, _I miss you_.

\---

Paranoia starts to underlie his every interaction with Reiji. He is supposed to be on the lookout for those that would cause Reiji harm but he finds himself watching _Reiji_ instead. He doesn't know what he's looking for, but he thinks he finds it. 

In Reiji's perfect record, all the wins his forces get for the Academia, Shun thinks Reiji is only sowing the seeds for a minefield. His victories end up volatile hot-spots, the natives crushed but still seething. Shun knows resentment. He knows it even when looking only at statistics on a page. It can only be a while before they rise up.

How can Reiji insist all this is _just as planned_? Why the hell would the Academia make a plan like this?

He accuses Reiji, hushed whisper in the console room because they are the face of LDS— Shun of the individual soldier's prowess, and Reiji as strategist and no one needs to see the division between them. He is good at keeping dissonance under wraps so no fury shows on his face for media appearances. Shun makes an effort to keep it up when Nakajima was near. "You're a traitor," he says, pointedly but not heated in his quiet.

But maybe it's that he's left cold by all this— Or maybe, he just doesn't care.

Reiji acknowledges his words but doesn't react with any sort of emotion, just pushes up his glasses to see Shun more clearly. "Coming from you, Kurosaki?"

It's a low blow and he recognizes the provocation. No one trusts him, even if he doesn't remember why but that only makes it more likely they're right. " _Coming from me._ If I can realize it, how is that no one else has seen?"

"Questioning orders is not seen as charming amongst the rank and file."

"So it's a privilege I'm allowed because I'm screwing you." Shun is blunt, his voice still low enough to keep from being overheard.

"If you would like to think of it that way." Reiji doesn't correct him, but offers an addition "But consider your own value. It would be quite difficult to find another duelist of your caliber."

Serena, of course, is out of the question. Undoubtedly. Too volatile to be a weapon of any value, and the Professor has his own secret plan for her.

" _Reiji_." He uses his first name, in a rare act of verbal intimacy— Shun wants to know from _him_ , not the company line. Reiji knows all of Shun's weak points, and it feels skewed that he is denied his own path of attack. He presses up to him, his head resting on his shoulder in full view of all the others in the control room. They are an open secret but _affection_ displayed between them is foreign, that they would so blatantly display a weakness. It's different than hormonal impulse, or fights.

Even at Shun's worst, he had struggled to cover it all with a thorned facade. That he'd show this is new territory and it will draw every eye in the room to them— their best duelist breaking down _again_ is a complication no one wants.

Reiji's nails dig into Shun's shoulder and Shun stands straight and looks him in the eye, drawing back of his own accord, and puts his hands to Reiji's shoulders and kisses him on the lips, not at all a light touch but with his usual force. The eyes that were focused on them fall away— it hadn't been support Shun had needed after all, just a sense of bad taste and no concern for inflicting their display on others. Reiji's hands relax and Shun thinks viciously at him, _see_ , it isn't _just_ you that learned to play the game.

Reiji continues the charade Shun started. He attempts to lead the kiss, pressing his tongue through Shun's parted lips but Shun wrestles it back into Reiji's mouth with his own tongue, refusing to lose the initiative even now that Reiji had attempted his own overture. His mouth is warm and the kiss is not as heated as it could be— A fight for control is different than one spurred by passion and anger. The times he imagines biting down into his tongue, how he feels a foreign pulse in against his own and imagines it being shorn away. The rush he gets from the fight for dominance, how alive he feels when he's proving himself. This is just business. 

Reiji puts his hands to Shun's jacket to push it from his shoulders and they back into a console and receive a glare then a hasty look away from a subordinate. Shun pushes Reiji back, but not far, the space between their bodies just enough to grasp to the front of his sweater and pull him forward— towards the door. Still entwined, they leave to the hall and stumble to a supply closet like LDS teens trying to avoid the gaze of their instructors during hasty fumbling.

In the dark, and cramped in the small space, Shun asks Reiji directly, "So, tell me. How many are in on it? If all this shit is _just as planned_ , what, exactly, is the plan?"

Shun can't see Reiji's face in the black but he can hear his breath and the rise and fall of his chest against him. He imagines a lie-detector, to detect the quickening of pulse, his hand pressed to Akaba's wrist in the dark. A beat passes before Akaba responds. "Winning, of course."

"Against _who?_ " he growls.

"Akaba Leo." Reiji says, but his voice is so transparent with unfulfillment he might as well have said, _everyone_. Because really, to declare war on Akaba Leo was to go against the whole of the world.

Abruptly, Shun sympathizes. He doesn't see any value in it, either.


	3. Chapter 3

She takes her boot to Reiji's throat, and demands, "Kurosaki." Unlike the hits he doesn't avoid from Shun, he is not here to take a soft touch to Serena. He dodges back but she is more than Shun's equal, and doesn't need anything approaching coddling to best him. She flips forward and aims a kick at his jaw, making up for her lack of height with a spring that's pure speed and power and gets her thighs around his neck and takes him down with sheer momentum. She makes her demand again, straddling him against the floor. " _Akaba_. Where is he?"

This is her third attempt. She knows Reiji called Shun back to him with her actions as an excuse, but she's _sure_ he never specified to Shun that he didn't know the assassin's face.

"You two don't seem to be on good terms. For what reason should I be trusting you with him?" She doesn't care if he's pretending at concern, or fishing for information. He is in no position to be questioning her, so her answer is a non-answer but it's also _true_. She has no patience for games.

"I don't trust you with him. Look what you've done to him already."

"People change." He disavows responsibility.

"I've _changed._ " She glares, "You've _gutted_ him. I'm not leaving him with you any longer."

Reiji doesn't budge an inch. "These were not our terms."

"You were planning on keeping those?" She snorts, disbelieving. "If you succeed, you'll die. Dead men are useless at keeping promises, don't you know?"

"Kurosaki has agreed."

"That means nothing the way he is now."

More than anything, even beyond the honor that she knows to be a lost cause, she still believes in fighting. Maybe it's the Academia, maybe it's only her steel will to live— no matter how many lives she tramples beneath her boots, she'll keep stepping. Kurosaki fights with a will as iron as hers— not for a moment does she buy that he would choose Akaba's coward's way out— that he'd end all the lives he'd ruined, so he'd not have to face the consequences for who he'd become. Even if he drowned beneath blood and muck, she had no intentions of letting him sink. She would drag his bloodied body to shore, amongst the others that had refused to die, and make him look them in the eye.

She hears a click, a duel disk starting up, and the sound of a summon. Another. A third. Shun setting up for an XYZ, behind her. She turns her head, to face him.

"Serena." He orders her. "Get off him, or I'll execute you as a traitor." He figured it out immediately.

There's no doubt in his words, of course. That wouldn't be like him.

She doesn't take out her deck, or set her disk. She looks him in the eyes instead, over her shoulder, and bares her teeth. "No. You owe me."

\---

Shun does, but the rest of the security that came when he slammed his hand against the call button when he entered do not. Layra hovers in the doorway and holds Shun's hand, watching as the guards swarm in and overwhelm her with sheer numbers because force doesn't work. The child doesn't distract him entirely from the way he notices Nakajima's eyes on him, and a small contingent of them that place themselves directly in his line of sight, between him and Serena. Layra squeezes his hand, to remind him that he's there. Shun doesn't understand why he's bothering to distract him. He has no desire to obey the orphaned impulse to shove through the guards and fight them away from her, with her.

She's dragged out tranquilized with a bloody lip, and Layra tugs at his hand, harder. 

He is breathing hard but standing still. Nakajima is still watching him. He's hyperventilating, eyes wide. He's paralyzed in place, as Nakajima's group goes past, and his heart rate jumps as they exit the door. Layra looks up at him concerned and Shun doesn't see him at all, only those uniformed suited backs. They'd carried him off like that, before. He'd attacked Reiji like that, before. He can't stand Serena because they're too much alike— she was right, back then, when she'd observed Reiji had a type.

He doesn't remember shoving Layra aside, and bolting down the hall after her but he must have. Before he can think he's bolting down the hallway. He tries to fight through their bodies, tackling through them with his arm outstretched as he shouts a name. He's desperate in a way he's never heard before from his throat, though it's echoed in his ears after Heartland missions.

Stupid, he's so stupid, of course they're ready, of course there's the needle, piercing his skin as he screams, ragged and raw like that will be enough to overcome the syringe's hypodermic kiss like poison apples for the Academia's princess. He's nothing but a fool.

He's not even shouting the right name. It must be his own, because no one ever saved him, but syllables don't fit in his mouth right.

\---

He dreams: a mission that never was in Heartland. 

He and Serena stop for ice cream in a stall in an unburned section of the city, and she smiles at him and takes his hand. People in uniforms swarm around them and a plumes of smoke envelop the city like a phoenix readying to be reborn. He's agitated, but she smiles and laughs and abruptly he hates her again. He can't laugh, anymore, how dare she be able to? 

She smiles and laughs and calls him, "Shun." And then, his heart thundering in his throat, she turns away. The blood on his hands make it hard to hold on. He wants to pull her back to demand answers— she's an imposter, who is she? But she dances a step ahead, and their fingers slip apart and she's beyond his reach and he can't hear anything at all.

He wakes up thinking in the dream, he was wrong. It wasn't Serena, that has been replaced. It feels like a film has been lifted over his eyes.

He wakes with an IV in his veins and he yanks it out, panic yet to abate. He glances wildly around the room, his hopes pinned on being alone, breathing hard. _Hospitals_. He _hates_ hospitals. He wants to be alone so no one can see his weakness, but no such luck.

He isn't alone. Layra is at his bedside. But only Layra. Layra has seen this from him before. His breathing evens out, gazing at Layra with his fists curled in the fabric of his shorts. Shun has never noticed how much resentment there is in Layra's voice, when Layra asks again, hesitating, "Did you ever . . . find Ruri?"

Or maybe he's always mistaken that resentment for fear, when they're in fact one and the same. No one likes being reminded how easy it is for someone important to be forgotten, replaced. Shun had once been a living fragment of what Layra must fear most. He is his own imposter, if he still doesn't know the name Layra keeps assailing him with.

He looks him in the eye, into that wide-eyed prying look, and for once has an answer to give him. His voice is completely steady. "Stop asking. What makes you think there's anything left to find?" 

Layra's face blossoms in hurt and Shun doesn't even feel bad for it. It's better Layra learn from Shun's mistakes, than make the poor choice to think regrets, like dreams, could mean something. Maybe tonight, he'll burn those notebooks, but it's probably too late for him now. 

"I . . . You wanted. . ."

Shun doesn't remember what Layra says it is he wanted, though he believes it's true. The only part of it that matters is the truth of that. That he'd changed. He doesn't wait on Layra's hesitant sentence to string itself to a close. He tells Layra, before he can climb down from his chair and skitter away out the door, away from Shun's narrowed eyes and his tone, all combative. "If you want something, don't wait. Go grab it yourself." 

While you still remember what it is you want, he doesn't say. Layra already knows that part. There's no reason to rub it in.

\---

Shun checks the roster of occupied hospital rooms and is not surprised to see Serena is not listed. He hadn't expected anything else. She is, horribly, stronger than any duelist he has ever known. 

Instead, he heads up to Reiji's office, and enters without knocking and without preamble drops his revelation between them, in the echo of a truth Reiji had once dangled between them when he knew Shun was too blinded to see it for what it was. 

" _You made me yourself, **Akaba**?_ "

At his desk, Reiji looks up from the papers he'd been reviewing, and his eyebrows raise a fraction. "Aah." He stands, and something is satisfied in his posture. Like he'd been waiting for this, and he crosses to Shun. The timing is completely inappropriate, but he hears fondness when he speaks, "Everyone has to come from somewhere, Kurosaki. Would you rather I credit LDS's training program?"

"Those weak-willed duelists you churn out are no threat." he says more by reflex than anything— even though he usually keeps his insults for LDS _inside_ his head. He's long given up on understanding all his own functions, the words he says aloud and those he keeps to himself, and those he doesn't think at all but just sit heavy in his heart and gut, unknown to him entirely except in the way they weigh him down.

"A no, then." 

He doesn't want to give up, again. Akaba's expression bizarrely soft, proud. His ears ringing as he knows no matter how long he stares into his own inner abyss, it won't surrender him his memories. There is only logic, and in his mind's eye he can see the pieces fitting together: the videos of the young Akaba Reiji that is nothing like the adult before him, bitterness bleeding into Serena's voice as she asked, "Don't you ever wonder why we look alike?" 

Akaba, who would destroy the world to get at his father. Akaba who had, probably, destroyed himself. Akaba who had as good as admitted he had destroyed Shun.

" _You bastard_." The bruised entrance where he'd ripped out his IV, the injection of sedative earlier, the sore discolorations around his wrists from restraints all scream at him not to deck him. He doesn't care. He decks him, a hard swift punch aimed straight at his stomach, and Akaba catches his fist with his open palm.

"Does it make a _difference_ , Kurosaki? If not me, it would have been the Academia. I've worked hard to keep you from their clutches." Reiji holds his ground and his gaze bores into Shun.

He gropes mentally for a moment— the past is useless except in the ways it informs the present. He's right, it doesn't. It doesn't matter what Akaba has _done_ , it matters what he's _doing_ , so he needs to know— he reaches a conclusion. " _Why_?! Was this some fun little _game_ to you, someone to use you for support and kiss you when you were feeling _in the mood_? Is what we have now the end goal for your plan, or is there— are you _still_ not done?"

"You know the goal I am working towards. As always, Akaba Leo— I aim to take down the Professor's legacy."

The Professor was nothing new, but his legacy. . . Shun narrows his eyes. " _You're_ his legacy."

"Yes. I didn't think you would have any objections." His voice is still much softer than he'd thought Akaba was capable of speaking. His voice was tender with yearning. 

Shun thought of the old videos of himself, of the fire of having a true cause that had blazed within him, and how now his insides are only blackened char. Sympathy to Akaba is like poison and he wants to expel it from his veins but it's too late. He remembered the kid in the diamond patterned sweater, wide-eyed. He remembers Layra, mostly as young and clinging to his stuffed bear. Maybe it wasn't that he had confused fear and resentment, but that Layra was changing only now.

Objections? No. "I didn't realize you were a _coward_ , Akaba." Shun says and doesn't meet his eyes. 

Reiji doesn't so much as shrug, looking back down to the work on his desk. "Of course. You are frequently somewhat limited in your awareness." His voice is cold again, level, familiar. If it wasn't so bizarre, he'd think he'd hurt him. Sympathizing with him is unpleasant, it makes him feel delusional. He reminds himself, he'd have nothing at all to sympathize with if Akaba hadn't fucked him up in the first place.

"Fine. I'm not objecting."

"I'm taking down _all_ of it." Reiji clarifies, and raises his head from the desk, to look at Shun. Including you, was unspoken.

Shun thinks about it— the old videos. How the Academia had attacked his homeland. How Shun is the Academia, now. In Heartland, they had thought him a traitor.

They had been right.

He feels bad about the places in his heart where he doesn't feel bad about that, and says on impulse, "Fine!" He takes a breath, to clear his head. " _Fine_ , I already fucking said that, Akaba." He says again and stalks out of the room, before he has to suffer listening through any more of Reiji's responses.


	4. Chapter 4

He trains for several hours against students that are all laughably under par, before he notices Akaba watching him. He narrows his eyes at him, and then, looking at the assembled students that have all been vying for a chance to fight with him, and leaves while they're in mid-argument. He talks into his disk's communicator, opening a channel. "Akaba. Prepare a field to duel me."

Habit is hard to break. Or maybe, he is too broken to try and mend. It's easier to wear his sharp edges against Akaba, who never yields. If he shatters again, Akaba has seen all of this before. The corners of his eyes are hot with loss.

When Reiji selects the Heartland field, Shun can't pick out the differences from the real thing. The last mission he had there, what were the aces he'd seen, what were the names engraved on the foundations on the still-standing buildings? He doesn't know.

He dives for an action card, instead. Reiji had made him himself, and he is combat specialized.

Akaba will reap what he sowed— Shun beats him at 4000 LP to 0, and drags him upright from where he'd been blown by Shun's last attack. He feels that he's smiling, with all his teeth. "Again." He demands.

There is nothing new Heartland can offer him. But right now, this is what he needs. The familiar feeling of combat. That makes him feel at home more than anything in the illusion of the city. It feels like battle was his birthplace more than the city. Even now that he knows the truth, but maybe that only makes it more true: because he doesn't remember anything of Heartland as a home, but when he dreams he remembers how it sounds at war.

\---

Shun lays undressed next to Reiji, the summer heat sticky in his room. The air conditioning, he never uses. 

Cold reminds him of hospital tables, ragged clothes, something like home that only existed in fragments that were half-impressions and half absence. Warmth is rolling over and watching Reiji breathe, aware he could wrap his hands around his neck, use his scarf as a garrotte, observe as his skin discolors with lack of oxygen and Reiji struggles unable to free himself. It's an idle thought, not even an impulse, like the echo of a fading dream. He'd wanted to, once. He can't remember why, but knows he had probably been whole then. Now, he doesn't even have to _want_ to: Akaba will self-destruct on his own, he knows that. There is no need to make a special effort, for him.

Shun has a lot of things he'd like to destroy— everything that rattles around in his head that isn't quite _his_ : the early records that made his equilibrium lurch and vision blacken even now that he knows the truth of them, ears ringing; those moments where he cringes at fusion cards, doctors, the notebooks he (again) couldn't bring himself to burn, Serena— but this isn't one of them. The easy anger that is entirely his own, how could he hate that?

He rolls onto Reiji to press his ear to his chest to hear his still beating heart, and falls asleep before he can imagine the sound of it stopping. 

\---

He wakes up in the morning still lying atop Akaba in a sleepy haze, woken by Akaba stirring and starting to search for his glasses. Shun stares at the doorway, where Serena is standing, leaning up against it and watching. She looks disgusted, and turns away to leave before Akaba has the red frames of his glasses resting properly on the bridge of his nose.

Shun, finally, thinks to ask. He turns his gaze on Akaba. "Serena. Is she also. . .?" Like you, like me? He doesn't know how to say it. It's too wrong a thought to put to words. It feels like his tongue has committed treason, saying even that much. He doesn't even like her, but the thought is wrong.

A smile pulls at Reiji's lips and instead of feeling relief, Shun's stomach drops. "Why do you think it is that she hates you?" He puts one hand through the long side lock of Shun's hair, and pulls it back to see his face better. "No." 

Shun pulls back violently, before he can be sick. Everything about her suddenly makes horrible sense. He is maybe going to strangle Reiji, because he cannot bring himself to strangle Layra, who never told him. His repeated question— what happened to Ruri— was almost as bad as his brother's _I made you myself_.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What's done is done-- a bit of the past to explain the present.

Serena has long been able to break past her rooms to escape, so breaking into the cells at the sight of a girl with her own face is even easier. Unlike Serena, Ruri does not have a long record of making her guards as useful as cardboard cut-outs, or cameras with capped lenses.

Serena keeps her voice down because she knows well what would alert them. She climbs down from the ceiling quietly and pads, cat-like, onto the balls of her feet. Ruri's eyes follow her down. 

Serena wants to know— this girl could not have lost and still been here breathing, and a winner wouldn't be reduced to being kept in a holding cell like this, like her own. She has a suspicion that she knows is truth— this girl was also being kept from the front lines. Rather than asking curiously, she makes a statement and awaits confirmation. "You. You're not being allowed to fight."

The other girl looks at her, looks at her _uniform_ with narrowed eyes and a facial expression Serena has never seen before and doesn't know how to divine. "I'm not being allowed to _anything_."

Serena nods at the agreement. "Another prisoner." She means herself, in the statement, "From where?"

"Where else? How many places are you people invading?" The other keeps her voice low even in anger, and Serena approves— she's clearly a fighter. Better than the professors that keep her caged here, the scholars that would sit her in front of books like there was _value_ in filling her full of knowledge then keeping her from putting her hands to their cause. It doesn't matter where this girl is from, she's from battle, the battle that's been denied Serena.

"Ah. The front." Keeping her in here, untried, was dishonorable. "A warrior shouldn't be caged, when you could fight for your cause." She didn't have much time to spend here now, before she was caught and then the fight to return would be more difficult. "A warrior should get to perish with honor."

The girl's eyes widen, and she bites down on whatever it was she was going to say, then her eyes abruptly narrow, "You want to duel? I don't have my disk, or my deck."

"I'll get it back." Serena promises, and turns to scale the wall back to where she came, but the other girl grabs the back of her coat. "Let _go_ ," she hisses, remembering not to shout.

"In a second. Bring me another set of clothes, too. I'm cold." 

Serena eyes the tatters of her clothes then nods. "Fine."

The other girl lets go, and it's another night when Serena returns: with two duel disks, Ruri's confiscated deck, her own deck, and an extra copy of her uniform for Ruri.

\---

Serena was right. A warrior _should_ perish with honor, and while so many of Ruri's comrades were taken with the odds stacked uneven, this is the least she can do for her. The card she makes of her, she keeps close, and Ruri keeps Serena's deck. Her own, she throws over the ramparts. 

When the guards find her in Serena's uniform, they drag her back into Serena's rooms. No one gives her a second glance, and she never hears the official story for what happened to Ruri.


	6. Chapter 6

Shun stumbles into her room, shouting. He looks like a man drowned, gasping, his lungs still filled with water even as he heaves himself onto dry land. "Ruri!" She hates it, but for a moment, she can't help but hope. She stands and he wades over to her, and takes her hands in his own. 

But he's searching her face with his eyes like he's still lost at sea. He's looking for something he doesn't know if he's found, or not. Maybe he expects her to smile, like all the years and deeds she carries haven't slaughtered every bit of her happiness that's not soaked in blood. Maybe she expected him to come back all at once, too. She knows she sounds betrayed when she says to him, "You figured it out? You took long enough."

His grip on her hands loosens. Maybe she killed the magic of the moment, the hope with her words. Maybe he thought he'd remember, just because he knew the truth. Maybe he thought things would change, all at once. Her brother had always been the same kind of idiot she was. The kind who believed in miracles, even if he couched it terms like _iron-will_ , as if wanting to win desperately enough would stave off loss.

She can tell, when he looks at her, he still only sees Serena. She's been her long enough to know. She still doesn't let him go, even if his eyes are losing the light that had been so bright only a moment ago. She confirms. "Yes. I'm her. I've been Ruri all along." He tries to pull away and she digs her nails in. He's not the brother she remembers, and he probably never will be.

But that's no excuse for him to stop trying, now. She had promised herself she would do better for him, than that.

She smiles, and looks him straight in the eye. "Don't think I've forgiven you for making me wait. I've been worried about you, idiot." It's probably the first time he's heard someone say they loved him in a long time. She doesn't think she's ever seen him look more hostile and lost, and he still doesn't say a word.

\---

Layra's feet swing down from the high stool, leaning on his elbows as he looks at his brother. In front of him are scattered pages of battle schematics, from his brother. An Akaba's homework, and he is starting to grow into his role. He only misses the bear a little bit, and most the time he doesn't remember why it was important. Reiji isn't looking back at Layra, but is instead looking at Shun, on the monitors.

Shun has figured it out, despite his last wipe, and his brother is happy about it. Layra isn't sure what that's supposed to prove, but he feels a little bit like he failed a test— or that someone else completed it first, with a higher score, which might as well be failing. His brother has no interest in failures. He shudders, and glances up.

He reaches across the table, ignores his homework, and goes to hold his brother's hand. Reiji looks up, momentarily distracted, and Layra's eyes go wide at being caught. He trembles. He knows he is supposed to be working.

But Reiji smiles at him, too.

Layra doesn't know what that means, but the important part is his older brother doesn't remove Layra's hand from his own.

\---

Ruri used to sing— she hasn't in a long time, so holding hands with Shun on the roof her voice wavers. She's affected Serena's low husk for far too long to be able to manage a soprano trill, but at dawn, holding hands with her brother it's a nostalgic feeling. Before their city was invaded, before her brother was destroyed, she'd do this. She'd wanted a stage, someday, but it was embarrassing with an audience. Shun and Yuto were her only witnesses. 

It's nothing like Serena, and Shun looks at her like a stranger when her face heats. She feels ridiculous. How does Shun manage being Akaba's show dog? "Say something." 

He looks at her carefully, like he's holding the fragile soap skin of a bubble on the tip of his tongue, and breath alone would be enough to burst it. At length, he says, the sun bright and near blinding on their faces, "It doesn't suit you."

She punches him on the arm, hard enough to bruise.  
\---

Shun knows he has never known Serena, but he knows Ruri even less. He resents that Ruri doesn't resent him the way Serena did. The birdsong in her voice, the fingertips she brushes across his skin when they hold hands, they're all gestures for a brother he's never been. 

He hopes she is recalled to the front soon. She is the strongest duelist he has ever known, and in the face of her brightness he feels like he'll crumble away and have nothing left to show her but an eon of dust so thick that even she will realize it's worthless to try and find the place where his memories have rotted away, then leave him and go away for good.

He is afraid she'll see that eon of dust but not realize that, and instead unbury her brother. Of that, he's _very_ afraid. The stranger who wrote the journal entries, the stranger whose dizzy spells and hatred Shun had inherited, Shun had taken all of his life for his own. 

For someone that planned on destroying himself, he is startled to find he does not want to give this life back. It's one thing to give it up, but another to give it back. He doesn't want to.


	7. Chapter 7

She knows better than to think the Professor suspects nothing about her, and what happened. But he has it the wrong way around: of course, in his mind, Serena would have won. The month after that she had spent oddly skittish, that was her reconciling her knowledge of the truth with the rest of the world. But satisfactorily for him: when he sent her to the battlefield after that, (sure Ruri would show her true colors, if Serena had been replaced) she performed more than well.

If Heartland hadn't taught her, she learned it in that fight: that the only truth in the world was the one created by the winner. A loser would lose everything, even themselves. The card she kept close to her breast proved that, long before her brother did. 

But the Professor must still think she believes in honor, to allow her this diversion so long. He accepts her interest in Shun, because Serena has reason to be interested in the brother of the girl with her face. But Serena has no reason to refuse a direct order, from the Professor, calling her away from Shun and back to the battlefield. 

She hates it, still. But she remembers her comrades that had struggled so fiercely. Even if she drowns beneath blood and muck, she will not sink. Yuto would have wanted her to live, even if he hadn't.

The messenger, younger than her but with a record just as vicious, that's to accompany her in Shun's place stretches then unwraps a lollipop, and talks around it to her. "We're going soon, right? Standard's not that interesting."

"Synchro won't be either, when we're done with it." 

"Aah, man, you're really a drag. Can't you be more fun? Like this!" He removes the lollipop and sticks his fingers in the corner of his mouth, to pull it into an exaggerated smile. She watches him, eyes narrowed, until he sighs and puts the candy back. "That's a no, huh?"

"Yes." She finishes packing, and stands to go, marching out the corridor. 

"Well, whatever. As long as you're as good at hunting as your record says. I don't want you slowing me down." Not terribly concerned, the boy follows behind her.

What did he think he'd get for finishing? Ruri knows the future she fights for— but she knows if she were to glance sideways at Sora, she'd see no goal glittering in his eyes at all. She'd see what her brother's eyes look like, when he thinks about the past. 

It's no wonder she is the Academia's best. Out of everyone there, she might be the only one left whole.

\---

In the dark of Akaba's office, Shun sits in his chair, spun away from the door to see the glass window that took up the whole of the wall. He was silent, watching the city lights. It's beautiful, below. It's fake and rotten, a peace bought with the lives of the children they sent to LDS to be sent to the Academia to be sent to _anywhere_ — Heartland, Synchro, territories in standard that weren't under Akaba control. And from there, they send others to the grave. 

None of that makes Maiami less beautiful. 

He doesn't know most of it. Past the Leo Corp tower, the LDS campus, the dueling arenas, Shun was seldom left to wander out on his own. He knows that if he were wander out through the lobby into the streets he would find them as strange to him as simple bloodless happiness, as the high sweet sound of his sister's singing. It might as well be a foreign country, but from up here, in Reiji's spot in the tower, at a distance it looks like home.

He can hear Reiji and Himika negotiating in the doorway, Himika out in the brightness hall and Reiji standing in the darkness. The lights are off so she can't see Shun there, listening in. She's a conspirator too, against Akaba Leo.

Probably has been for a long time. He'd wonder why she married him, but he's dating Akaba Reiji (if dating was the word for it) and is helping him destroy himself, so he doesn't wonder. Instead, he just listens to their plans come together, her in the light, them in the dark, and Leo a world away that they were going to destroy.

They have allies in Synchro. Reiji's seeding of rebellion had worked well. The Commons have wanted to tear apart the Tops for a very long time, and this gives them the means and righteous motive. The Tops turned against them first. LDS will follow Himika before they follow the Professor, a shadowy man who steals their best and brightest for himself and returns them not at all— though sometimes he'll give back a soldier with the same name and face. Shun scowls in the dark. This will all be over soon.

He doesn't know what he'll do, when they're done. 

Behind Reiji's back, where he can't see him, he reaches forwards as if to catch his hand but across the room it's an empty gesture. He doesn't understand Ruri the way she wants him to understand, but in that moment he thinks he understands that part of her, always grasping for something already gone beyond her reach. He just doesn't call it hope, the way she does.

He doesn't have a past to regret, or a future to make promises to. There is only the present, and the threat that it will end, sometime soon. Tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written hypothetically for the final round YGO ship olympics prompt of regrets, and promise. But the Reiji/Shun was more background to the fic than central to it, huh . . .
> 
> There is hypothetically another chapter to this— the bad end, written out in full. If anyone wants it, I _can_ write it, but I thought maybe it would work better like this, with one section with the last word for Ruri, and one for the last word for Shun.


End file.
